Greetings all,
I am assuming that everyone who gets involved in renovation, extensions, self design, custom design and self builds wants to to build-in character and therefore add value. Estate agents, property journalists, design magazine editors often pepper their writings with descriptions such as 'oodles, bags, loads of character' etc.
Mind you the description is oft applied to holiday cottages Cornish villages, Tuscan streets and squares. So it's maybe so overused that it's meaningless except as a polite substitute for old, rambling, near collapse (hang on that's me)!
But I bet you won't say to your architect 'oh, while you're at it I don't want the development to have any character'.
However, It does go hand in hand with the adding of value. you'll notice that the adverts, or more properly 'We are delighted to offer...' displays in Country Life, and the quality end of estate agent world, pepper their descriptions with charming, unique, stunning, exceptional and full of character descriptions. Interestingly in a recent copy of CL they were 'featuring' a modern country house (for modern read newly built, with a flat roof and seemingly office-style windows) which offered no such glowing descriptions...I wonder why. Still over a million quid though!
My trusty Chambers dictionary describes character as 'the aggregate of peculiar qualities which constitutes personal individuality': it seems to me that peculiar in this context means specific to yourselves, not weird! Mind you, one person's weird can be another's delight (that word again)...sorry Ferdinand.
I leave you to ponder this one.
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